Look for next week's roundup at Thanks, But No Thanks then it's back here the week after that. You can find some other recent roundups in the "At the Law Schools 2" category, as well as sixty or so older roundups from 2004-2005 here. Finally, if you want to know how I choose posts to highlight, see "How I Write the Weekly Law School Roundup." (If you have a law-student weblog that I don't seem to know about or that isn't in my blogroll, please send me an email.)

Ken Burns’s series The Civil War turns twenty years old this month. A plain old documentary it isn’t; in fact, by the standards of most “historical” documentaries, it lacks a certain testicular fortitude. It boasts neither flashy 3-D maps nor live-action re-enactments; what few live shots there are of battlefields were mostly taken after dusk, giving them a surreal, almost dreamlike quality. Its scoring is simple, its narration restrained. It is, well, rather bookish.

Bookish, but compelling. Campbell's post is a good appreciation. I watched Burns's documentary on PBS when it was first released, then watched it again as I was making my way through Shelby Foote's 3-volume The Civil War: A Narrative.

Both are recommended--Burns's documentary if you have six hours, Foote's book if you have six years. It took me about ten, but I was never in any hurry to finish . . .

Look for next week's roundup at Thanks, But No Thanks then it's back here the week after that. You can find some other recent roundups in the "At the Law Schools 2" category, as well as sixty or so older roundups from 2004-2005 here. Finally, if you want to know how I choose posts to highlight, see "How I Write the Weekly Law School Roundup." (If you have a law-student weblog that I don't seem to know about or that isn't in my blogroll, please send me an email.)

MENCKEN UPDATE . . . The Library of America has published H.L. Mencken's six "prejudices" books in a single two-volume set: Prejudices: The Complete Series.

I first read these books in college, where the library had all six books. In the years since, I've tried to buy my own complete set, but only got halfway. Published long ago, the books are difficult to find in good condition. I felt justified in adding the new volume to my long shelf of Menckeniana.

For a review of the book, see this by Katherine A Powers, with its mention of Mencken's "combative, beautifully sprung, ingeniously funny style, as irresistible as a laughing baby." For a biography of Mencken, see Terry Teachout's The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken. For more from this weblog, see this post from one of my more prolific years, 2004: Mencken's Bathtub Hoax.